I am really lucky. There is almost nothing that can get between me and my love for all things "Harry Potter." Before I saw the 6th movie in the series, I had heard the grumblings that "true" fans were pissed. However, when I heard the little "dah dee dah dah dee dah deeeee dahhhhh" I was not sitting with my arms crossed across my chest, waiting to be disappointed - I was squealing. And I left the theater with a big smile on my face, too. For a further discussion full of SPOILERS, click read more.
Would I love it if the movies were two-day-long page-by-page recitings of the novels? Of course! Did the movie over-emphasize the teen-romance aspects of the book? You betcha. Even with its over two-and-a-half running time, they left out a lot of incredible scenes describing the history of Voldemort and his ancestry and the Horcruxes (hello - the House of Gaunt, please!!) in favor of some serious hormones.
However - I am not without hope. After all, the seventh book is being made into two movies. Perhaps this sixth film is a bit of a place-holder, and our one last chance to really laugh and think like teenage students before we leave Hogwarts for the next two films and prepare for the final show-down. [There's a word for the funny song that comes up late in Act Two during musicals that brings levity to the trying times, but I can't remember what it is. Maybe it's just "comedic relief." ] So maybe the seventh movie will go back and address some of the more Horcruxy-elements of book six to help flesh-out the film.
I hope so.
But even if not, I'm still probably going to love that seventh movie. And the eighth, too. It's so much more fun to giggle than grumble and I love the Harry Potter Universe so much it'd take a real stinker to drag me down.
And just to touch on some other elements of Half-Blood real quick:
The Ginny and Harry kiss was not just majorly different from the book, it was also slightly problematic. Is Ginny going to be the one to remember the tiara in the Room of Requirement?
And Harry not being frozen for the final Dumbledore scene was a bit weird. Instead of being paralyzed they sort of established that he was trusting the "Shhh"-y Snape to take care of matters upstairs, and that seems like a stretch.
As far as the acting goes, Emily Watson's performance was LOADS better than her work on Pheonix. Daniel Radcliffe actually has real potential. Jim Broadbent and, as always, Alan Rickman were pretty great.
Were the changes too egregious for you to enjoy yourself? Who of the children actors will shape up to have a real acting career, after these films are finished? I want to know!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
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Emma Watson WAS loads better, but still god-awful, IMO. But it doesn't affect the movies for me anymore, I have just come to expect her crap acting as part of the movies. I'm glad that she's not sure she's going to stick with acting as a career. I hope she leans towards that feeling. My guess is that she's a pretty cool, smart person who would be very good at lots of things, but got cast in a movie when she was eleven and had to stick with acting for a decade to finish out the series, but realizes that she's just not cut out for it. But still, definitely better in this move than in previous movies.
ReplyDeleteDaniel Radcliff is developing some chops, though. The part where he had taken the felix felicis potion was fantastic.
As for the book/movie comparison, the only thing that REALLY bugged me was the complete subjugation of the whole Half-Blood Prince storyline. I mean, it's kind of the same way in the book; it's never really the main focus. But in the movie, they like mention it once, and then at the end, Snape is like, "I'm the Half-Blood Prince," and then swoops away. Kind of lame-ish for me.
I think this is my second favorite of all the movies, though, after Prisoner of Azkaban. However, I think books five through seven are more difficult to make good movies out of, because they are so much more about the overarching, big-picture stuff, whereas the earlier books were much more self-contained, so it was easier (even when cutting things out) to get the point of the book across in one movie. With these later books, it's just more difficult, because they are much more interconnected and rely heavily on recalling what happened in previous books and anticipating how other things will play out in the future.
I personally enjoyed the teenage romance stuff in this movie. It kept things funny and light, and true to the book, IMO. The sixth book was super, duper romance heavy. It read like really good, really long, shipper fanfiction (and that's not meant as an insult). The movie felt the same.
Also, now that Dustin is (FINALLY!) reading the books, I'm glad they left stuff out of the movies, so there are still some surprises left for him.
Prisoner is my favorite, too! I don't know if I like this one more than Order of the Pheonix, but this one was definitely my third or second favorite.
ReplyDeleteMan, I really like Harry Potter.